Feasting and nesting over Thanksgiving weekend

I may be slacking with blogging, but I've been pretty productive on the home front. Eric says I'm nesting. My mom asked if I was doing the the opposite. I say I'm purging. I think purging is nesting. I mean, nesting means making room, right? Not just accumulating crap. The crap is already accumulated. What I'm doing is purging this house of as much of it as humanly possible. It's driving me nuts, and there's no room for an extra body at the moment. Well, we could fit the extra body, just not all the necessary crap that comes along with an extra body, especially when that extra body is a baby that comes with it's own set of miniature furniture and play things.

Anyway, I've been annoyed with the house for eons and feeling like we've just been leaving it as is because we're in limbo and keep thinking we'll move, and THEN we'll settle in and have the house set up the way we want it. Living like that stinks. And it's stupid. So I've decided to make the house work for us right now. So far I'm mostly revamping the basement, but I have plans for every room in this house.Most of the plans just require extreme purging.

So that's what we did over the Thanksgiving weekend, after the big feast, of course.....

My mom and brother and his two munchkins arrived late on Wednesday afternoon. Clay and Hannah spent an hour or two adjusting to each other which basically means that they alternated between running around excitedly together and arguing over something. Hannah took a couple of self-imposed alone times in her room to help her adjust to the chaos of a full house, and eventually, we tossed them both in the tub to wind down.

Clay was going to sleep on a mattress on the floor in Hannah's room but since he napped in the car on the way here, that was a no go. I read them both bedtime stories and then Clay went down to the basement and fell asleep watching Shrek on the air mattress we had set up for Chip.

The next morning I got busy in the kitchen and Eric camped out on the floor with the kiddos, helping them glue images clipped from magazines to a shoe box. That along with a few other crafts kept them engaged and in one place for a surprisingly long period of time.

When their energy threatened to burst the seams of the house we bundled them up and walked to the playground. Hannah showed Clay her favorite climbing tree, and he scurried up with his dad's help.

As expected, everybody was a little calmer after some sunshine and fresh air. I finished up the feast, and we chowed down. I'm not really into pictures of food so there are none...but I suppose a family shot would have been nice. Oh well, there's always next year.

After lunch Clay and Hannah helped me whip the cream. I let them play with the mixer a little too long though and we ended up with a hybrid between whipped cream and butter...Not ideal for a pumpkin pie topping, but not totally terrible either.

They both seemed to enjoy the fruits of their labor! Honestly, Hannah probably would have liked it more if I had let it turn the whole way into butter. I swear that kid would eat butter by the stick if I let her. 

And that's it. That's all the pics I took. Not very exciting, I know. The older Hannah gets, the less of a mamarazzi I become. I suppose that's normal. There are far fewer first times these days, and how many pictures do you need of the same ol' activity?  

I wonder if I'll resume mamarazzi habits after the new baby comes. There's all kinds of stuff instructing you to do the same with the second as you did with the first, which makes sense--obviously the second kid should be ogled equally--but life isn't fair and people don't do things just because they should (although I often do--this compulsion is a recurring topic with me and my therapist). If I had to wager on it, I'd guess that the mamarazzi pension will return with a vengeance when the baby shows up and that this blog will be plastered with pics of him and his big sister.

Clay turns 3!

Clay turned 3 last Saturday so Hannah and I drove back to Hagerstown for the day to celebrate. Notice that I said Clay turned 3 last week; the key phrase there is last week, as in, I'm currently only a week behind on blogging. I'm looking for applause here people--I've been playing catch up since I taught that class at the beginning of the summer and am just now thinking it might be possible to catch up!

Shockingly, Clay went right for the book that we got him first. Maybe it was the plain brown wrapping paper that the children's bookstore wrapped it in? No clue what the appeal was, but he opened that shortly after we walked in the door and then insisted that his daddy read him the story about Otis the little red tractor. When I called my mom and brother looking for present ideas, they both tipped me off to Clay's obsession with tractors. This tip sounded good on the phone, but in reality, tractor-related stuff is not easy to find. There's a ton of construction truck stuff out there, but tractors are scarce. I'm glad that I went to a local children's bookstore because the owner took me right to Otis when I asked about tractor-themed books, and it's a great book! Very cute.

We ate some lunch then and got out the cake that Grammy brought. Hannah snuck a hand in to feel a tree right as I was snapping a shot.

Clay was a little hesitant about blowing out the candle so Hannah helped.

As soon as the flame was out of his way, Clay went immediately for the tractor and started to lick the icing off the wheels.

Then he plowed the field.

Once the top of the cake was removed, he cut everyone a piece. I don't think I even saw him eat any--he was too busy slicing and dicing.

Hannah shared a small piece with me, and I scraped off the icing, but in spite of the small amount, the sugar rush still kicked in so we took the kids outside to run it off. Since the stomp rocket that Grammy picked out for Clay is an ideal toy, she had him tear that open before heading out. She did good on that one--it was a big hit! Clay liked to get a running start and then land on the inflated part with a heavy boot stomp. He landed so powerfully that he kept shooting rockets onto the roof, much to his delight. Hannah didn't have so much power in her stomp. She stomped, and if she was lucky, the Styrofoam rocket lifted up ever so slightly and dropped onto the ground an inch from the base.  When unlucky, the rocket didn't lift at all. In response, Clay kept saying, "Wash me, wash me!" And then he'd run up, stomp the daylights out of it, and send the rocket soaring.

We went back inside after a bit, and Hannah gave Clay the other present from us. We picked out these SmartMax Power Vehicles. They're magnetic car pieces that you can put together however you want to create a variety of vehicles. I'm not sure he's terribly interested in the building part, but as soon as daddy had one put together, he enjoyed pushing it around. 

His daddy got him a remote control truck that was a big hit between both kids, but my refusal to use flash screwed me out of getting a shot of that.

Aunt Pam was there too, and about halfway through the day I realized I hadn't gotten any pictures of her so when I noticed her 'nuggling Mason I broke out the camera. Not the best shot of her, but Mason's eyes look amazing, right?!

We took the party back outside after a while and stomped the stomp rocket a kabillion more times, then the kids rode their bikes down the hill out front and complained about getting them back up the hill.

 

Driving to and from Hagerstown really wears me out these days, but it's always worth it to be able to spend time with my family. I'm just glad that my brother has a place with lots of outdoor space now where we can all get together easily and have room to breathe and play.

This year's family reunion

My class is over; my grades are submitted--wohoooo!!! Catching up on blog posts is next up on my hit list of things to accomplish so expect constant blogging this week. My goal is to blog so much that it's my readers who have to play catch up.

My self-diagnosed mini case of OCD insists upon chronological order so next up after the daddy/daughter/neighbors camping trip is this year's family reunion which was on June 16...almost a whole month ago. We all take turns hosting, and this year my aunt Pam volunteered. This is a pretty easy drive for us so we just made it a day trip.

I don't have a lot of stories for the pics since we pretty much just hung out and ate like we do every year, but I feel the need to start by explaining the fighting sticks in the first pic. Eric should really have some sort of toy man nickname because prior to us pulling out of Bemore on any sort of a day trip, he fills the trunk with as many toys as he can squeeze in. Lately he's really into these fighting sticks he has so he threw them in before we left for the family reunion, and once at my aunt's, they were the first thing picked up. Clay loved them, and I'm pretty sure Chip did too.

Since I don't have stories for all the shots, I'll just use captions.

Hannah watching Clay and Chip sword fight.

The scene as viewed from afar.

Kim and baby Mason.

Yard scene--here's how we play.

Chatting ladies scene.

Aunt Erica and Mason.

Devon and Clay tearing it up on the bean bag toss.

Clay kindly helping up Uncle Eric after Eric play fell.

Hannah....doing nothing other than looking intense and adorable.

Bubbles! Grammy, ever-so-kind-and-wise, brought a goodie bag for the toddlers which included bubbles.

This is too much for a caption: when I was a kid, my favorite thing to do when I stayed with my aunt and uncle was to search the driveway for lucky beans. I should be the luckiest lady alive considering how many of those things I collected, and I suppose in many ways, I am. Anyway, I was really excited to share that past time with Hannah. Of course, for the first 4 or hours, she had no interest in looking for these lucky beans, no matter how excited I was. Eventually I gave up and decided to go with Clay, and of course then she sang a different tune. She carried the green bucket Grammy brought, and Clay pulled the little red wagon, and we marched our procession down the gravel driveway looking for lucky beans. I never knew it as a kid, but apparently they're seeds from a cigar tree. I have no clue if that's the real name of the tree--my uncle Bob said that's what people call it because it drops these long brown pods (full of lucky beans) that look kind of like flattened cigars.

We loaded up the wagon and bucket and then headed back to the yard to inspect our booty.

Counting lucky beans with aunt Pam.

Okay, I know this isn't a quality pic, but it totally makes me laugh so I'm sharing in case it makes anyone else laugh too.

Jason and Kim take in interest in sword fighting.

Clay takes over to defend Kim's honor.

In addition to sword fighting, bean bag tossing, bubble blowing, and lucky-bean looking, we did some exploring in the forested area that is part of my aunt and uncle's property. I was bringing up the rear in this group and liked how the others looked in front of me. I think I have a thing for pics of people walking away. I don't know why I have that thing, but I know I take a lot of pics like this.

So, we took off  in the woods and as soon as we were 3 feet in, Devon looked at me and said, "I think we're lost," and he was serious so I couldn't laugh, but I really wanted to. I assured him that we were fine and then I made sure I stayed close and also that Chip didn't get too far ahead which he did at one point and it clearly made Devon nervous--I don't think he liked the idea of being lost in the woods with just me, and really, that's a valid worry. I wouldn't want to be lost in the woods with me either.

Punching balloons were also in the Grammy goodie bag.

Chipster and Mason (who is giggling at the faces Kim is making).

Counting lucky beans with uncle Donny.

Mason spent the entire morning trying to get someone to play the bean bag toss with him and finally, aunt Pam acquiesced.

For never having family reunions growing up, we are totally rocking at it now. I think this was our sixth year...maybe? I'm sure someone will correct me. Anyway, it was another great day with the fam, the kind of day that makes me wish we all lived just a little bit closer so we could do it more than just once a year.

Early Christmas celebration

In spite of Christmas still being a few days away, Hannah has already done quite a bit of present opening starting the second weekend in December when we brought up the kitchen (still in the box) that Grammy had brought with her over Thanksgiving and asked Eric to hide and put together sometime before our early Christmas celebration.  We changed our minds last minute though and decided that we didn't want to host and would be driving to Hagerstown instead to let Chip do the honor. Mom requested we give Hannah her present early so that all the pots and pans and plastic food that Chip and Erica and Mom got her would make sense. I took a video of Hannah being presented with her gift, prior to Eric putting it together, and another of her playing with the finished product with Amy, but while Eric was putting it together, Hannah decided she didn't want to wear pants, and I wasn't paying attention to the pantslessness when I took that second video, so it became unshareable--which is a total bummer because it's super cute. Unfortunately, I didn't realize she was pantsless until after I uploaded it to YouTube (because it's the first thing my mom noticed and pointed out), and I can't figure out how to delete a video from there, but I did find a new editing program and one of the pre-set options is to to turn your video into a cartoon. I don't like how it looks, but it does make it so you can't see the pantslessness which means it is now shareable.  Second, unfortunately: YouTube is taking forever to make the changes so I can't share the link yet.

Hannah played with her kitchen all week, putting her breakfast in the oven instead of eating it and stealing carrots while I was mid-chop and stashing them in the microwave. Every morning when she came downstairs she said, "Mom, I have kitchen!"

On Saturday we drove to Chip's for our early Christmas celebration. We got Clay a little Thomas the Train plow thingy, some extension tracks for his train set, and a book. Us "grown ups" spent most of the day tinkering with the train track, trying to create the most awesomest track and use every single piece.

Hannah couldn't play with her presents because it was a bunch of small pieces that we didn't want to lose so in addition to using the train set as a distraction, we played with this crazy dinosaur that roars and shoots darts. Grammy got it for Clay. It didn't work as a great distraction though because it freaked out Hannah. She kept her distance. She likes dinosaurs, but not mean ones, and this one has teeth and moves on its own.

All that play time made us tired so we curled up in Clay's little bed and pretended to sleep.

Then it was back to the train! This last track we made was definitely the awesomest.

It was freezing outside that day, but we ventured out for a short burst of fresh air anyway.

It was a really nice, relaxing day, and although we love hosting, we really loved being able to just play and lay on the couch until the food was ready and then lay on the couch some more afterwards.  So far, this holiday is shaping up to be pretty laid back which is right up my alley!